3D Printing

New tool gives structural strength to 3-D printed works. Objects created using 3-D printing have a common flaw: They are fragile and often fall apart or lose their shape.

"I have an entire zoo of broken 3-D printed objects in my office," said Bedrich Benes, an associate professor of computer graphics at Purdue University. The printed fabrications often fail at points of high stress.
The Year of 2011 in 3D Printing. As the year comes to an end, we often tend to reflect on the events that occurred within it and boy… was there lot to reflect on in 2011.

If there is one thing that became obvious to us, it’s that 3D printing has come a long way since our reflections of last year. This year the 3D printing world was dominated by an impressive amount of 3D Systems acquisitions, a tremendous growth of new desktop 3D printers and a much larger media coverage than it had ever received before.
Prepping Blender Files for 3D Printing. This tutorial was written by Shapeways community member Jeff LaMarche.

Teaching Strategies Fayetteville Free Library, by Lauren Smedley You’ll hear a lot of talk about the “death of the public library” these days.

It isn’t simply the perpetual budget crises that many face either. It’s the move to digital literature, and the idea that once there are no more print books (or rather if there are no more print books), the library as an institution will cease to exist.
Ultimaker: There’s a New 3D Printer in Town. The new Ultimaker 3D printer made in the Netherlands has arrived in the US.

The machine, which prints bigger and faster than MakerBot printers, was created by three Dutch makers who met at the Fab Lab in Utrecht, Holland two years ago. The Lab is one of dozens of digital fabrication centers around the world affiliated with MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms. Fab Lab/Utrecht’s manager, Siert Wijnia, collaborated with web designer Martijn Elserman and grad student Erik De Bruijn on the speedy new machine. “We wanted to have a better 3D printer, not necessarily to start a business,” says De Bruijn, who had built several open source RepRap 3D printers before tackling the project. “If Fab Lab wasn’t there, this whole thing wouldn’t have happened,” insists Elserman.